From a personal perspective, I enjoyed Cataclysm up to 4.2. Challenging 5 man was interesting. Tier 11 and 12 were both great with the exception of Ascendant Council HC on 10 man, and Rhyloth in general since that boss's turning is weird at times. I honestly don't understand why people hate Firelands, except when you had to farm for Dragonswrath even when you had heroic Ragnaros on farm status, because it got boring. Tier 13 was absolutely terrible and I didn't enjoy over half the fights on HC while they were relevant. The sourness reached a peak with Madness and Spine, both of which were hard but for the wrong reason.

Outside of raids, I agree with what most people have stated already: the Zones were just disconnected. While this was convenient, it removed a lot of experience essential in RPGs. Deathwing is just a bad boss in general that lost most of its personality built up since Warcraft 2.

For me, story is key to WoW. I am a lore nerd and love progressing my character each new story line. This is why I was so excited to have Cataclysm. An expansion where we get to delve deep into the history of the dragons and help to take down Deathwing. Also, we get to see Deathwing, one of the most bad ass, cunning villains ever in the Warcraft universe burst forth for revenge. Maybe my hopes were too high, but I received none of that. We saw no scheming from the master of schemes. He was just "THIS WORLD WILL BURN!" when through history he has always been far more cunning and methodical than that. It was just a big let down.

That is why Cata is the worst for me. It's story fell flat. Deathwing, who should've been the most bad ass villain was never even really seen scheming or plotting our subtle, yet total downfall. Such a waste of a great villain and an awesome, dragon filled storyline. Oh and dont get me started on the travesty that was the War of the Ancients. We were told it would be this massive outdoor raid and really do justice to one of the biggest moments in Warcraft history. It was a cruddy little 5 man that took no time to clear. Another disappointment and another waste of a fantastic storyline.

Cata did still have it's moments. For me, going about getting my mage main the legendary was, for me, the greatest part (storywise) of that expansion. Being a part of the naming of a new Blue Aspect was jaw dropping for me. Also pwning Rag on his home turf was satisfying. That's about it.

Cataclsym was bad for a lot of reasons. They changed a lot of classes. Mage for example. The Fireball glyph changed from crit to haste. Pre-Cataclysm, but with all the changes implemented in WotLK, the difference wasn't noticable. But once Fire Mages hit level 85, they sucked balls. No crits, no Pyroblast, no DPS. And the best part is, they barely fixed it. I remember Fire being so broken in Firelands I actually quit my Mage and leveled a Hunter.

Cataclysm is where Blizzard got lazy. In WotLK there were constant class fixes. In Cata, Fire Mages were broken up until Dragon Soul. Dragon Soul was a crappy raid. It wasn't epic. We didn't even really get to fight Deathwing, just some stupid tentacles. In the end, what did we really do? Ragnaros was the fight Deathwing should have been. It was epic, Ragnaros is epic. Deathwing was a pussy. Where was he the entire expansion? Occasionaly flying over the map killing everyone?

The Lich King was present in so many Dungeons and Raids, you really felt his presence, the threat he posed. ICC is still the greatest raid ever created, simply because of the variety of bosses, but still it felt complete. The Lich King's monolog when you enter ICC; amazing. I can still get goosebumbs when I enter ICC. The trailers for WotLK were also a lot better. "Let them come, Frostmourne hungers!", arguably the best WoW quote out there.

ICC had 12 bosses, but on a farm night, it would take just as much time as clearing DS's 8 bosses. Blizzard just made fights lenghtier to make it seem as if the raids are as long as they were in WotLK because they ran out of ideas. Again, laziness. Leveling in Cataclysm was also a step down. I looked forward to my new talent point when I leveled. In Cata I had to level 2 levels before I got one.

Wrath of the Lich King was considered a step down from The Burning Crusade when it was released, but when Cataclysm hit, everyone loved Wrath of the Lich King. People said everyone would love Cataclysm aswell, once Mists of Pandaria was released. But that didn't happen. WotLK was bashed because it wasn't TBC, people just wanted TBC back. Cataclysm was simply a bad expansion.

Mists of Pandaria is a huge improvement, but the laziness of Blizzard is still there. Just the insane amount of dailies proves this. They are trying to make the game seem lengthier by just adding a lot of the same shit. Countless of dailies to farm rep. It litteraly takes you months to complete.

WoW has a reversed design process. Where other games become more refined and more complicated, WoW becomes crude and easy. WoW is being dumbed down. Now that I think of it, the perfect comparison is the WWE. It used to be amazing in the Attitude Era, but once we entered the PG era, it's barely a shadow of its former self. Why? Because it started to focus on kids. WoW is doing the same. It isn't honoring it's loyal players by keeping the game a challange, no, they are making it easier. Less talents, because there were cookie cutter builds. Blabla, they are still there. It's just easier to switch talents now. Had they made it that easy in WotLK, it would have been exactly the same as it is now.

1.- You're a liar
2.- You didn't play Cata's HC dungeons AT THE BEGINNING before the massive nerf. I did. And it was p-a-i-n-f-u-l.

Why it was painful?: because we pass from the AOE grindfest of WOTLK dungeons to 'things' like 'Crowd Control', 'Stuns', 'Polymorph', 'Saps', etc, etc. 'Things' that nearly 90% of the friggin' players had forgotten.

i played them and cleared all of them the 2nd day of cata (first day was lvling day ). some of them we had to enter manually cuz we had to low ilvl.. just because retarded randoms in lfd couldnt clear some dungeons doesnt mean they were hard. i think they were easy.. heroic 5mans was for instance easier then normal raid content, and way easier then heroic raid content.
if you dont believe me go check up achievements. even the dugneon hero achiev only took a fiew days (mostly due to vancleef vindicator achiev)

now bragging aside sure i agree heroics was harder then wraths, and mops. but that still doesnt make them hard and i stand by my opinion that i whould have liked them harder (lfd be damned). I enjoyed tbc heroics, in fact i enjoyed them almost more then i did the raids. but i seem to be a minority in my views that harder content gives you more satisfaction beating then easy content.

Changing Azeroth is something that many of us still don't like, some things are good, but most of it isn't for us. That sure was a high risk which come with a price, but I don't blame them for doing it, it's good to make changes, for good or for bad.

Dungeons.. a lie. Coming out like (we give you hard stuff again! only to nerf is a week later) Raids weren't that good either.

The greatest rise bot-wise we've ever experienced in the game didn't help it neither.

Being the last X pack..., therefore the one everyone hates the most as always.

Dragon Soul, we still have nightmares with DS, is... is it over .. yet :S!?

I personally liked many things of it, but mostly disliked it. WotLK was the worse thing we had seen till Cata, but at least the lore going on was plain epic, the quests were also plain better than in Cata, raids weren't that good, in fact it was the worse part of WotLK, but at least we had Ulduar and ICC, vs only one in Cata which could save it, Firelands.

It's not like "it was the last X pack so we just hate it". The fact is that many people enjoy MoP more than Cata and some even more than WotLK. Also, check the incredible amount of pools out there, people put BC, Classic, MoP and WotLK ahead of Cata.

The pros. MoP is showing that they have learn. They no longer give epics nor reputation away for free, that's really important. (Being an epic the latest raiding HC [or even normal] loot).

LvL up is getting nerfed by 30%, but it's come on time, not too early and too late. So till now you had to work it out to get alts up!

Cataclsym was bad for a lot of reasons. They changed a lot of classes. Mage for example. The Fireball glyph changed from crit to haste. Pre-Cataclysm, but with all the changes implemented in WotLK, the difference wasn't noticable. But once Fire Mages hit level 85, they sucked balls. No crits, no Pyroblast, no DPS. And the best part is, they barely fixed it. I remember Fire being so broken in Firelands I actually quit my Mage and leveled a Hunter.

Because some people focus on the bad rather than the good. It was a balanced expansion for me, I liked parts and I hated parts, but it was enjoyable.

People focus on the bad rather than the good? So, Classic, Burning Crusade, and Wrath are all rose-tinted goggle nostalgia-fests, while Cataclysm is somehow reverse nostalgia? Because all over the boards, when someone says they miss 1.0-3.3.5 (classic - end of wrath), they get trolled with "rose-tinted goggles" and "nostalgia" responses.

What two hour heroics? I solo queued the vast majority of my dungeons as a healer and a DPS with a large majority of runs being around an hour with the bad ones being about an hour and a half which is what I was used to from playing all the way back in Classic and BC. If I was in a group that did not want to work together and it was destined to fail then I took the reasonable choice to leave the group and requeue. Dang I remember PuG groups at WotLK launch that took over an hour and even joining some that was on their third hour. So many players was blinded by rose tinted glasses from face rolling old dungeons that they massively out geared for a year. Going from end of the expansion outgearing old content to a brand new expansion with gear resets and only content being available is the current content was too much of a shock for many. Just like previous expansions MoP is no different and there was posts of players QQing that their epics are so easily replaced.

Cataclysm had a lot of recycled content. If you look at Blackwing Descent, it is essentially Blackrock Depths/Blackrock Spire/Blackwing Lair all over again, in terms of art and enemies (they even re-re-revive Onyxia). Firelands felt a little more fresh, but Ragnaros is not anything new. Dragon Soul re-used Dragonblight and Wyrmrest assets, and every boss had this "ho hum, done this before" feel to them -- this was all made worse by the fact that the raid lasted so long (real time).

What two hour heroics? I solo queued the vast majority of my dungeons as a healer and a DPS with a large majority of runs being around an hour with the bad ones being about an hour and a half which is what I was used to from playing all the way back in Classic and BC. If I was in a group that did not want to work together and it was destined to fail then I took the reasonable choice to leave the group and requeue. Dang I remember PuG groups at WotLK launch that took over an hour and even joining some that was on their third hour. So many players was blinded by rose tinted glasses from face rolling old dungeons that they massively out geared for a year.

I remember my first heroics in WotLK. They were absurdly easy. My first ever heroic was HoS, and it took about an hour... when everyone was undergeared and clueless. My second heroic was CoS, and we got the drake with ease. Every run thereafter was simple; the curve was maybe a day. For Cataclysm, it lasted until at last 4.1 on my server.

Part of the problem is that they drastically changed healing, and if your group's healer wasn't good under the new system it made everything absurdly painful. If you were one of the healers who adapted quickly, then you solved at least half of the problems most groups faced on your own.

Godamn, you must really suck at this game if it took you anything over 30mins, and I'm being generous.

And yes, I preferred the pre nerf heroics where CC and a decent of amount of knowledge was needed to finish it. It's a good learning curve to step in raiding for new players as well.

CC. Raids. I keep seeing people put them together, but I so rarely see them together in the game. It's a point people bring up that's just never been relevant. 5 man dungeons do not, and cannot teach people or lead them into raiding; encounters can't be complex enough and cannot last long enough to execute proper rotations and mechanics simply because of composition and by extention utility shortage simply wont allow it. That's pretty much why I actually dislike 5 man content.

Cataclysm was bad, because the end game was so self evidently rushed, and frequently broken. Things that made it hard for a lot of guilds were purely compositional issues, whereby having a certain classes on an encounter would literally be the difference between success and failure.

Godamn, you must really suck at this game if it took you anything over 30mins, and I'm being generous.

And yes, I preferred the pre nerf heroics where CC and a decent of amount of knowledge was needed to finish it. It's a good learning curve to step in raiding for new players as well.

And you're delusional if you think anyone was getting through something like Stonecore or GB in quest greens in under 30 minutes. And I'm being generous. In fact, just the queue to get IN as dps was often a 45 minute wait.

I preferred them as well, but hyperbole doesn't lend anything positive to this discussion.

"Look around you. We're all liars here, and every one of us is better than you" - PB

I miss the days of Cata pre-nerf Heroics. You could hardly ignore anything and you'd have to CC like a mother.

It truly felt like you weren't meant to be there, you're weak and your character isn't strong enough. It felt like I had to rely on a team! Group effort!
It was the only time I think I was ever nice to people and gave any advice in chat.

But yeah I think the community really split in Cata and Blizz was trying to appease both parties which made the quality of the content suffer.
First half of Cata good followed by the unending shit torrent that is LFR and Dragon Soul.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue tends to force design decisions like that. I doubt you talk more loudly than all that cash.

exactly.

some developper are gamer at heart and make game they want to play and other are just businessman and make game that reach the larger public and bring the most money in.

---------- Post added 2013-05-02 at 06:02 PM ----------

Originally Posted by gutnbrg

@OP u really enjoyed 2hour heroics?

running an heroic dungeon for 15 or 30 minutes is like watching a high budget movie at a theater of about 15 or 30 minutes lengh.
I don't know about you, but i like my movie on 2 hour lengh, and my dungeon too.